The work, which includes a set of chronicles spread over 200 pages, is intended to be a journey through time through “Places” of memory which begins with a dive into “A certain history of painting in Morocco” and a scholarly critique of “The Elsewhere of our painters” which brought it to its beginnings, writes the editorialist and publication director of “Quid.ma», Naim Kamal.
“It continues with a visit to the mysterious funerary stele of Abou Yacoub Youssouf al-Marini au Chellahand a stop on the journey of the elusive “renegade” Ahmed Al-Alj Al-Inglizi au Morocco of Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah», he adds.
The work is thus a peregrination which passes from Mo’atamid Ibn Abbad has Aghmat has Sidi Belabbas has Marrakechof the Republic of Salé who never existed to the enigmatic misadventure of the Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem. So many men and places which, with each sentence, took the author back to happy times. Almost happy, he said.
In the preface to the work, Mr. Kamal notes that “I am talking to you about (almost) happy times” is divided into two parts, each exploring spaces populated by vestiges, signs and features which, in alignment with words, stones, canvases, become pretexts for questioning and fascination.
“Places of memory”, second part of the work, where the stories complement and overlap, take the author into a fascinating immersion, first in Chellah, where he seeks to unravel the mysteries of the funerary stele ofAbou Yacoub Youssouf the Merinidboth object and pretext of the story, he reveals.
“Surrounded by legends and including an orifice 12 centimeters in diameter which piques his curiosity, the stele is subjected to a harsh interrogation by Abdeljalil Lahjomriwho does not hesitate whenever necessary to confront her with the testimonies and stories that circulate about her,” points out the editorialist.
-He confides, likewise, that Chellah, a place steeped in history, inhabited by specters and legends, myths and superstitions. Abdeljalil Lahjomri “questions what remains unsaid and seeks in its hidden corners to make heard what is unspeakable.”
“The site, its stones and its secrets exert an obsessive attraction on the author, and his investigations lead to an observation which opens, as always with him, the way to other research, both Rabatwhich appears under his pen, through his questions, as the most imperial of the imperial cities of the Kingdom of Morocco, emerges as a story that remains to be written,” he continues.
It indicates, moreover, that well before accompanying the author in his wanderings in the vestiges and meanders of past times, it is another place of memory, subject of the first part of “I speak to you about times ( almost) happy”, which excites him: the mobile and moving space of the canvases where the Moroccan painters.
In the end, Abdeljalil Lahjomri takes us through real, symbolic or virtual places of memory, questioning and exploring with meticulousness, passion and intelligence, turning over the stones with the firm conviction that beneath their weight lies the meaning of things, extends the roots of the past and present history of Moroccan identity, concludes Mr. Kamal.
